I've downloaded the XTS manuals, but they're rather light on CUE information. Supposedly the "natural voice recognition" gives you a great deal of latitude in talking to the system.

So, how can I enter a navigation destination, for example. Can I do it all n one command rather than having to enter city, street, and address separately?

danscrim

12-21-12, 12:09 PM

I've downloaded the XTS manuals, but they're rather light on CUE information. Supposedly the "natural voice recognition" gives you a great deal of latitude in talking to the system.

So, how can I enter a navigation destination, for example. Can I do it all n one command rather than having to enter city, street, and address separately?

You can start with saying everything in one command. Sometimes it works. When it fails, the system is smart enough to fall back and ask you for individual parts (city, state, street, etc) in an attempt to resolve the address.

Dramset

12-22-12, 10:07 AM

Thanks for the info. Next question: can I query CUE about places where I'm not?

OK, that sounds strange. Let me try again.

In my current 2011 Taurus SHO, I can ask the nav system for "destination nearest hotel", and specify geographically nearest or, if I'm following a route, along my current route.

I cannot ask for a specific hotel, i.e. "Nearest Hampton", nor can I specify a city, as in "Hampton in Lubbock, Texas." This would be a handy thing on long highway trips, which would be the main purpose of the car.

I can do this with the nav system in the Audi A6, although one might argue that they're cheating since queries such as "Hampton in Lubbock" must be phrased as "online destination Hampton in Lubbock, Texas", which initiates a Google search via the car's built in cellular connection.

codeman71

01-02-13, 02:43 PM

Hello Dramset, I work on the navigation system for CUE and I am pleased to say that you can do all of the things that you are asking for. To start, press the speech button on the steering wheel and say POI. If you have a route currently going, it will ask you if you want to cancel your route or say Destination to continue. If you don't have a route, it will ask you to say the name of the place of interest nearby or say change location. You can also say Near Destination or Along Route, or select them using the 5-way steering wheel control. If you say Along Route or Near Destination, it will then ask you for the name of the location. Then you could say Hampton Inn, or whatever the name might be. Or you could say Hotels and it would give you all kinds of hotels.

If you say Change Location, then you could could then say "Hampton Inn Lubbock Texas" and it will then give you the nearest Hampton Inns around Lubbock, TX.

The system will recognize most major chains, such as Hampton Inn or Starbucks, but if you are looking for something that has a unique name, you can try using the category name, such as Restaurants, or Hotels to find all types of locations.

If you have any questions, let me know!

Dramset

01-02-13, 05:55 PM

OK, let me see if I understand: I'm driving along heading for an address in Abilene, Texas, but I'm going to spend the night in Lubbock. The nav system destination is set for an address in Abilene.

So I press the speech button and say (prompts omitted for clarity): "POI", then say "Destination", then say "Along Route", then say "Hampton Inn".

It's not clear from your response if I can say "Hampton Inn Lubbock Texas" without canceling the current route if I'm not in or near Lubbock...

Since you're one of the programmers, two techie questions (presuming you're allowed to answer them):

-- What processor are you using? I assume it's an ARM variant of some sort.
-- What did you write the code in? C?

Just curious. I was a programmer in Silicon Valley for 30 years...

-- David

codeman71

01-03-13, 10:17 AM

Hi David,

Sorry, it was a little bit of a confusing post, I agree. If you are looking for a hotel along your route, that is exactly the flow that you would say, yes.

It is also possible to search at another location, regardless of whether or not you have a route running. The only difference is that if you don't have a route, it won't ask you if you want to cancel the route, saving you a step. So if you were in the same scenario, you would say: "POI", then "Destination", "Change Location", then say "Hampton Inn Lubbock Texas". The system will then perform a search around Lubbock giving you all the Hampton Inn hotels.

I'm not one of the programmers, but rather I'm an Interaction Designer, which means I specified how the system should function in terms of the user experience. So I'm not a programmer even though I'm familiar with programming and have written a few things, just not what I do for my job.

As for processor, it's running a 3-core ARM 11. Not sure what the code was written in.

-Cody

Dramset

01-03-13, 01:32 PM

Yeah, back in the day, we would have called you a "human interface person".

ARMs are nice; but I live in hope that someday the hardware folks will figure out that if they can afford a multi-hundred-watt budget for the audio, then 30-60 watts for a nice PowerPC or Core i5 CPU would allow them to make an ultra-fast and responsive nav system. Not that CUE isn't pretty good, mind you, but why should zooming in on maps on my iPad be faster and smoother than on CUE?

Anyway, thanks for answering my questions.

Dramset

01-03-13, 11:21 PM

Oh, yeah, one more question: in the XTS I drove, whenever I pressed the voice button, the prompt was something along the lines of "Please say a command, or say Help".

I imagine this would get old after the first few hundred commands. How short can this prompt be made? Ideally I'd be able to cut it down to a simple "beep"...

codeman71

01-04-13, 09:05 AM

In the settings, there is an option to change the voice prompts from Long to Short. The short prompts are quite a bit shorter.